Title: Afterlife Academy
Author: Jaimie Admans
Published Date: October 30th 2013
Publisher: Createspace
Even being dead isn’t enough to get you out of maths class.
Dying wasn't on sixteen-year-old Riley Richardson's to-do list. And now, not only is she dead, but she's stuck in a perpetual high school nightmare. Worse still, she's stuck there with the geekiest, most annoying boy in the history of the world, ever.
In a school where the geeks are popular and just about everything is wrong, Riley has become an outcast. She begins a desperate quest to get back home, but her once-perfect life starts to unravel into something not nearly as great as she thought it was. And maybe death isn’t really that bad after all...
Welcome to Afterlife Academy, where horns are the norm, the microwave is more intelligent than the teachers, and the pumpkins have a taste for blood.
I didn’t set my expectations high for this book. The cover was a giveaway for me. The book cover was cheaply done. It is plain and boring and all over the place. The girl’s makeup, her lipstick color in particular, doesn’t somehow seem suitable for the grayscale cover. They could have matched both the colors of the flower and the lips or something that reminds me to question, why the flower is added in the cover that way? It was so out place and also, I thought it was a pink flower necklace. Well, guess what, the flower in the book cover was neither a necklace nor pink in color.
The book was a disappointment. I was looking for something. It has this amazing concept but it was poorly executed. Somehow, I feel like the afterlife concept was just a tactic for this book to sell. The character, plot and resolution just don’t click for me. The whole story was kind of shallow. It was all about a girl trying to escape the academy so she can come back to her old life which exclusively includes her boyfriend alone to the point that I feel that the other people in her life, her family and best friend, are just plain extras or fillers. She is so hung up to her life because she feels so out of place and she’s not used to it because she used to be really popular and she got this boyfriend she’s super obsessed with. Can I just remind her that that boyfriend killed her and more?
The thing is that I was so caught up with my annoyance with Riley that I almost forgot that there are other characters like Anthony. The thing with him though is I can’t feel him. I can’t feel the character in him. It was like; he was just there because Riley has got to have someone to end up with because it’s somewhat impossible for her to be back with Wade. I feel like he’s just a second choice, just an option.
There’s also this knick knacks in this book that I can’t get over with. This book was first published in 2013. Just last year, but I feel the author was so outdated with what she’s writing. Riley was using a Nokia phone. Seriously? Where’s her iPhone or any android phone? And it was stated she’s popular and a teenager. Most phones now run on Android or Ios. I know Nokia runs on Windows now but still, you get my point? Moreover, the prank Riley tried to pull was not a funny prank. It wasn’t. The prank is something that I could have watched in a 1990s kind of movie with a country theme with the farm, barn and animals and all. Why do I feel like the author somehow ran out of ideas or something? There are tons of funny pranks in Youtube that could have inspired her.
Riley, the main character, is plain dumb for me. She is one of the most irritating characters I’ve ever read. Why? This book is on her POV and I’m bothered on how her mind really works. So, she was able to observe on the principal’s desk a phone and a computer the first time she got to the office, but how come she ended up thinking that maybe she and Anthony ended up in 1949. Hello? That’s just messed up. A phone and a computer like a laptop or desktop in 1949? That would have been impossible. She is beyond annoying. I can barely contain my annoyance while reading this entire book. One moment, she’s about to understand something and the next, she still won’t and will be back to her old, foolish self in just a matter of seconds. She’s full of excuses. In fact, she lives and breathes it. This is just bad. It’s no fun and full of nonsense for me. She makes mistake after mistake nonstop and she never learns. She’s a selfish brat, mind you. There was no character development in her aside from the sudden surge of love she felt at the end book. Talk about sarcasm.
★
Overall, the book has a big NO mark for me. I just felt compelled to finish reading it even though it was just a waste of time.
Me before reading the book.
When Riley keeps on making excuses to justify her wrong perceptions and actions.
On Riley's stupid prank and every single stupid act she does.
If you ask me if I liked the book.
